


Lessons

by activevirtues



Category: Alias
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-01-18
Updated: 2004-01-18
Packaged: 2017-10-02 18:00:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/activevirtues/pseuds/activevirtues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simon Walker presents: lessons in playing dirty from someone who knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: NC-17 for violence, swearing, and sexual situations. *wink*  
> Fandom: Alias  
> Pairing: Sark/Simon  
> Disclaimer: Two things - first and foremost, Alias, Sark, and Simon do not belong to me. They belong to Bad Robot Productions, JJ Abrams, and ABC. If they belonged to me, Simon wouldn't be dead and Sark would have more screentime (and get all the booty he wanted). Second, this story contains slash - male on male action, sex of the non-hetero variety, and if this is a problem, you shouldn't be reading it.  
> Author's Note: Several things. First of of all -- this story was written for thamiris's Blow It With Feeling challenge, using the feeling of spite. Also, big fat hulking thanks go out to [info]mnemo_syne and [info]rez_lo for beta, support, encouragement, and just general rockingness. Thanks also to the Sark Harem over at TWoP for inadvertent inspiration and gutterificness.

The pub was almost identical to twenty others I'd visited during the Christmas holiday, from the sticky-looking bar to the dimly lit pool table towards the back. Even the clientele seemed familiar, and I found myself counting the money I'd take from them as I tried to look as innocent and stupid as possible. I gave a little shiver as the winter wind closed the door behind me. I sauntered to the pool table and selected a cue. I could see the greed flash in their eyes as they sized me up. Tonight would be just as lucrative as every other night of my vacation.

If I had given a thought to morality, I probably would have left then and there. These people worked hard for their money, and even if I lost - which, of course, wasn't going to happen - the only money I'd be losing would belong to my bastard of a father. Besides, they had no idea what they were up against. I looked like what I was: a seventeen-year-old blond kid from the right sort of family, educated at the right boarding school, dressed in the right clothes, with all the street smarts of a two-day-old lamb.

Perhaps that last part isn't exactly true. I wasn't then, nor have I ever been, stupid. And if I added a little more innocence to my countenance than was strictly truthful, well, these people were just as desirous to take advantage of that naïveté as I was to take advantage of their inability to recognize a master at work.

Besides, it was fun.

At school, fun came in other ways. I did everything that was appropriate for the son of an extremely wealthy diplomat. There were no classes at which I did not excel, from French to Geometry to Literature to Physics. I was on the fencing team, the crew team, and the chess team. Every teacher sent glowing monthly reports to wherever in the world my father was - although I suspect this was partly because they were all afraid to tell my father what a disrespectful, arrogant prat I was. My schoolmates, on the other hand, had no such qualms, and hated me for making them look like idiots during classes, which, while unintentional, was something I always enjoyed. Their retribution came in the form of bruises where the teachers couldn't see, usually nothing worse. I spent my free time dreaming up ways to make them pay.

During vacations, I was shuttled between a few large, empty mansions in various parts of the country, left in the care of a team of nannies that had as little interest in me as I did in them, something for which I was always grateful. This particular vacation, I had managed to channel that disregard into something productive.

What many people don't realize is that pool is a game based entirely around two things - geometry and physics. Most average pool players have grasped this concept at the surface, seeing that shooting the ball at a certain speed at a certain angle off the edge of the table will get the ball more or less where the player intended it to go. Most of these attempts are inexact, for various reasons. People can't calculate in their heads, people don't have a full grasp of the sciences involved in being a truly good pool player, people just don't care. I, however, had always excelled at geometry and physics, had been able to calculate complicated strings of numbers in my head from the time I learned what an angle was, and most of all, I'd always been competitive. I don't like to lose, so I don't.

The routine I'd cultivated involved looking lost and dumb, playing (badly) against myself and looking arrogant when the ball did what I wanted it to do. At some point, someone would always come in and see me as a potential target, butter me up by telling me how well I was playing, and then ask if they could play against me. After I lost a few at first to reel them in, they'd let me win a few, tell me I was getting better, and then ask me if I wanted to make it interesting.

This pub obviously wasn't any different. As I went to the barman to ask for the balls, it amused me to see how attention was divided equally between the soccer game blaring from the tiny television above the bar and my fumbling attempts at hitting the balls. I barely looked up when a blast of cold air from outside ruffled my hair, and continued knocking in balls into the pockets in no particular order.

Something out of the corner of my eye caught my attention and I looked up, deliberately missing the four ball and scratching. "Dammit."

A tall guy, a few years older than I was, stood at the edge of the table, watching me play. He was dressed in clothes that were obviously meant to be fashionable, but managed to make him look more street than I imagined he had been trying to achieve. He was smirking down at me. "You're really not very good, you know that?"

He stood over me like he owned the pub, the pool table, and the cue I was clutching. I wanted to growl at him that I obviously knew I was bad, that I was doing it deliberately, but that would have defeated the purpose. An idea flashed through my head, and I spoke in the growl that I had been contemplating. "Better than you are, asshole."

The guy continued to smirk in a way that reminded me shockingly of myself after the last set of exams. He was mocking me, and the only thing that kept me from putting my pool cue through his eye was the prospect of taking every cent he had on him along with his cheaply made jacket. His voice was full of amusement when he replied. "Put your money where your mouth is, then. Prove it."

"Gladly," I spat back at him, and for the first time since I had walked into the bar I was entirely sincere. I would gladly take his money.

As we gathered the balls and prepared to break, I could feel every eye in the pub trained on us. I caught individual snippets of muttered conversation. "I hope Simon goes easy on this kid." "This boy's parents are going to kill him when he loses all of his money. I'm sure there's more where it came from, though." "Simon'll be buying the drinks tonight."

"Fifty pounds a ball okay with you?" he asked me.

"To begin."

"You can break, then," Simon drawled, trying to be polite and failing.

Simon will be buying MY drinks tonight, I thought to myself, and broke, sending a striped ball into the corner pocket.

If I were honest, which I'm not, usually, I would have to admit that Simon was infinitely better than I'd imagined he'd be. Clearly, he had an understanding of the game and the intensity of focus that it required. It took me by surprise at first. I was still playing to lose; Simon, on the other hand, was playing to play. As I missed a shot for the second time, I studied my opponent, knowing that it would be a while before I got to use my cue again.

He was good-looking, in a way that screamed "I'll do whatever the hell I want, fuck you very much," and it angered me. This wasn't the sort of thing I was accustomed to noticing. After all, at school, everyone was extremely aware that there were no females around, and noticing that someone was handsome could get you either bruises or - well, bruised. In my situation especially, the only people that I was around enough to notice were people who wanted to hurt me. I didn't like noticing, and I found myself glaring at him.

He fumbled, with a cocky glance at me. "Go ahead, do better than that."

"I will." I shoved as much Extremely Well-Bred Private School Coldness into the two words as humanly possible. I was losing, albeit deliberately, but even deliberately, I didn't enjoy it. If I weren't careful, he'd piss me off enough that I'd start to win too early, and then the ugly guy in the corner wouldn't bet all of his money and would still have enough to buy a pint, and nobody wanted that. I sank three more before I scratched - intentionally - and turned over the table to Simon.

He studied me for a minute, fingers stroking over the smooth wood of the cue, before he spoke. "You're obviously out of your league. You can give up now, pay what you owe me, and not get in trouble with your parents for blowing all your allowance."

"Go fuck yourself."

"Did they teach you that at your fancy boarding school, or was it something you picked up on your own?"

"Play." He was annoying me, and although I wasn't going to lose control, I was seriously going to consider it.

He seemed almost to sense my train of thought and asked me yet another annoying question. "What's your name?"

"Play," I gritted out again.

"Not until you tell me your name."

"Julian. Will you shut up and play now?"

He continued to smirk at me. I watched him bend over the pool table, daydreaming of all the ways I could hurt him with that pool cue. It wasn't very sharp, but people are often surprised at the amount of pain blunt instruments can cause. Amazing, the things one learns at a fine English boarding school.

With just the eight ball left to sink, hidden among the four balls I had left, he turned the table back over to me. "I'm Simon, by the way. So that you know who's taking your money."

"I'd say 'nice to meet you,' but I'd be lying. Do you want to go best two out of three?"

"It would be unsporting of me not to give you a chance to win back your two hundred pounds." His voice, with its plebian accent, was almost soothing, and it gave me pause. If I hadn't known with absolutely certainty that I was going to win, I might have thought he was trying to play me.

Either way, he was going to end up losing. And humbled. And with not even enough money for cab fare back to whatever rat-hole he crawled out of. "You're too kind."

"Eight ball, corner pocket." It dropped smoothly in, a disgusting cap to a horrible (deliberately so, I reminded myself) game.

"Show-off," I muttered, and chalked my cue. He'd committed himself to three games now. He was mine.

"Excuse me?"

Feigning puzzlement, I looked up at him. His hair fell into his face, windblown, as if he hadn't been in the pub for a good thirty minutes but had just stepped out of the cold. His eyes were almost the same color, a near-black that seemed to fit with the image he was trying to cultivate. It pissed me off. "I didn't say anything. You don't want to make this double or nothing, do you?"

"I have no problem with taking your parents' money."

I wanted to punch him. I had no idea how to get into a fistfight - I knew swords, and had taught myself other weapons, but fighting without them was still a mystery to me. In school, I had quickly learned that fighting back against people who were obviously bigger, stronger, or more experienced than I got me more bruises than getting it over with quickly and pretending to be more injured than I actually was. At this point, however, I was willing to throw down my cue and take a swing to feel the satisfying crunch of cartilage under my hands. Instead, I gestured to the pool table. "Break, then."

He did, gracefully, which made me wonder if four hundred pounds was really enough to take from him. Street trash shouldn't be graceful, especially not male street trash. It was two minutes before I was allowed to play again, two minutes of watching him move smoothly around the table, his gaze trained intently on the play at hand, seemingly oblivious to the rising noise level in the bar and to my own glare. When he came up for air, he'd put half of the striped balls into the pockets. "Yours," Simon drawled, and leaned back on the edge of the bar, twirling his cue lazily between his legs, to watch my progress.

I wasn't going to lose this time. I knew it, and as I began methodically sinking each ball into the pockets, I sensed that he knew it as well. "Double or nothing?" he asked quietly as I calculated my next move.

"Yeah." The eight ball fell with a click into the middle pocket.

There were no smug looks now, from either Simon or the small crowd that had gathered around the table to watch the final game. Simon still thought he had the least chance of winning, apparently. I knew he was wrong. I was looking forward to watching him realize it as well.

I could actually feel him watch me as I bent over the table to sink three balls in rapid succession before moving to the other side of the table to consider my next move. Obviously, he wanted to distract me, to disrupt my concentration. It wasn't going to work, but it made me even angrier. I narrowed my eyes, determined to shake off the feeling of being studied like the insects in biology class, and sent two more balls into the pockets. "It's not going to work, you know," I muttered as I moved nearer to where he stood.

"What's not going to work?" he asked, amusement in his voice.

"Your blatant attempts to distract me."

"Are all rich people this paranoid, or is it an art you've perfected on your own?" His voice buzzed briefly in my ear before he moved again, standing behind the corner pocket at which I was aiming. Long fingers toyed with the cue as he watched me sink another shot.

"I've always tried to be original." Two more balls, one methodical shot after the other, and only the eight ball stood between me and Simon's money.

"A worthy goal." He spoke just as I took the shot. It was deliberate, clearly intended to make me miss.

I sank it anyway and turned to him with a triumphant flourish. I've always had a flair for the dramatic, I admit, and foiling his attempts to cheat brought out the worst in me. "I should charge you an extra hundred for that outrageous bid to throw my concentration, but I'll be nice."

"I doubt you're ever nice."

I ignored him and continued. "You owe me eight hundred pounds from the three games, along with the fifty pounds per ball from the past two games."

"That's ridiculous. Each game after the first was for double or nothing, not per ball."

"The per-ball had been agreed upon at the start of all of the games. However, since I doubt you have enough on you to cover it all, I'll settle for the eight hundred pounds." I smirked. I knew he was right, but I enjoyed rubbing his face in my magnanimity.

He muttered something about rich, arrogant little cocksuckers and fished a wad of cash out of his pocket. "Eight hundred."

I smiled, gave him as polite a nod as I've ever given anyone, and said, with more spite than I had intended, "Pleasure doing business with you, Simon."

"Fuck off, Julian." He said my name like it was the most offensive word he could think of. I could feel his eyes follow me as I turned on my heel and strode out the door.

As the door swung closed behind me, I heard one voice crow, "Okay, lads, pay up. I told you the blond kid would win." I couldn't wipe the grin off my face.

The air was colder outside than I'd remembered it, and it had gotten impossibly darker. I shivered, huddled deeper into my jacket, and walked faster. This part of London seemed different at night, and in an instant I realized that I'd stayed in the pub much longer than I'd intended. I knew where I was - that was never the problem; I always knew where I was. The problem was the footsteps behind me.

The dark brings out the worst in people; the things that stay hidden from plain view during the day are allowed free reign when night takes over. I am no different, have never been. At this point, however, I was painfully aware of my lack of weapons or means of defending myself. I hate being helpless, having no control, and as my long strides became a run, I felt my control slipping. The footsteps behind me picked up their pace as well, and I felt something grab the collar of my coat and pull me into the alley I had just passed.

I struck out blindly, praying to a God whose existence I doubted that I'd hit something painful and be allowed to escape. God wasn't listening, didn't exist, or was aware of my doubts, however, and hands grasped my flailing arms and pinned them above my head. "Gimme your money."

I played the "I'm a scared little kid in the wrong part of town" routine. "I don't have any money, sir... please let me go."

"Do you think I'm an idiot?" I felt it wise not to answer, and he continued. "I saw you win eight hundred quid not five minutes ago. Give it to me. Now." The hiss of a switchblade opening cut through the pounding of blood in my head. I fumbled for my wallet. "Faster. I don't have all night."

I had just opened my wallet when I heard someone step into the alley. My attacker whirled around. "HEY!" was all he got out before being punched in the stomach. He doubled over in pain, dropping the knife, and received another punch, this time to the face.

Slumped against the brick edifice of a run-down building, I watched Simon take on my attacker. He was... good. Graceful, still, in that strange way that had angered me in the pool hall, but vicious. His fist found my attacker's nose and let loose a stream of blood, dodged an inept jab at his stomach, and finished by kicking the bleeding man where it hurts the most. The man slumped to the pavement, moaning and twitching in pain.

Cautiously I stepped forward, and Simon strode toward me. "You're fine, then, Julian?"

I nodded. "He had a knife. I'm okay, I just..."

"Shaken up?" He rubbed my arms as if to reassure himself that I was indeed alive. "You don't seem like the type. Why didn't you fight him?"

Backing away from his touch, I once again found myself against the wall of the alley. I ignored the questionhoping it would go away and I wouldn't have to give the humiliating answer. "Why did you follow me?"

"It's a rough neighborhood, and you were carrying a lot of money."

"You were hoping to get it back."

He nodded. "Yeah."

"You should have waited until the guy robbed me, and stolen it from him. Fewer people to fight." I snatched the knife off the ground and brandished it. I had a weapon now.

He ignored the weapon in my hand. "You come into this part of the city, obviously unafraid. You win, very publicly, a huge load of money, and you don't fight when someone tries to steal it. What are you, stupid?"

I hate that word. I hate it the most when it's used in reference to me. I struck out at him with the knife. "I can't fight."

My advance struck him in the arm, ripping his coat (no large sartorial loss, in my opinion) and tracing a thin line of blood across the muscle. He stepped back and studied me. "You're fighting now."

He was playing with me, and that, like everything else Simon did, incensed me. Before I could stop the words from coming out of my mouth, I ground out, "That's because I have a weapon. I can't fight without one."

His eyes grew wide and he stepped back, laughing. "You never learned to fight? What do they teach in that expensive private school of yours?"

"Fencing," I muttered, and struck out again, missing as he came around my side. He shoved me up against the brick wall, twisting my hand until I had to let the switchblade fall to the ground, and gripped my arms above my head.

"Fencing," he spat. "You're going to carry a big fucking sword with you everywhere, then? All the dangerous people you meet, they're all going to play by the rules?"

I hate feeling humiliated. It is without a doubt my least favorite emotion. Pressed up against this wall, robbed of my ability to strike back, of control, by someone who was bigger, stronger, and - it galled me to admit it - more skilled than I, I felt the humiliation rise and threaten to drown me. The words flowed out of my mouth like a prayer, and I could no more stop them than I could stop Simon from kicking my ass.

"I don't know how to do this, but if you could teach me, I swear I'd learn. I'll give you whatever you want, just teach me how to do it." The words grated on my ears; I could hear my brain screaming WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING? KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! Somehow, it didn't matter. The words were out, and I meant them. I wanted to learn. I didn't want this to happen again, ever.

The words seemed to sink in for Simon as I watched. His grip on my hands loosened, then tightened again, and his face took on a hard cast. "I don't have to teach you anything. I could steal my money back, Julian, and leave you bleeding in this alley."

I wasn't going to say it. I wasn't going to. The word would not leave my mouth. I was going to wait for him to do exactly what I asked of him, because that's the way the world ought to work.

"Please." Dammit.

It seemed he could see my thoughts, hear me berate myself for begging before street trash. He enjoyed it. It pissed me off, and there was nothing I could do about it this time.

"You want me to teach you, Julian?" His face moved closer, and his hands pulled me up to eye level. "Fine. I'll teach you."

There was no warning. His lips slammed onto mine. He transferred my wrists into one of his hands, still catching them firmly above my head, and stroked the other down my chest. I bit down on his lower lip hard enough to draw blood and pulled my hands down and apart, panting. He pulled back infinitesimally and grinned through his bloodied lip. "I'll teach you everything."

Again, I found myself pinned against the cold brick, hitting my head against it hard enough to draw a gasp. His mouth came down on mine again, tongue slipping inside, tangling with my own. He tasted like blood and something else, something intangible and indescribable. I felt myself grow hard. I realized it then - this was war, and I was enjoying it. His hands roamed my body, slipping under my sweater to stroke over my abdomen. My muscles tensed involuntarily, my cock twitching toward the hand that was so close. His mouth moved to my neck, biting hard and then soothing with his tongue. He pressed me into the wall with his hips, and the sensation of his hardness against mine had me fighting a moan in the back of my throat. It rumbled into his mouth and he pulled back to grin down at me, almost crazily. "I'll teach you," he repeated.

"Then teach me," I said, and wound my hands in his hair to pull his mouth back to mine. He was still grinning against my mouth, and it annoyed me. This was still war, and I would win.

His fingers worked at the buttons on my jeans as his mouth moved on my neck, continuing to bite in patterns that somewhere in the back of my mind I knew would be very visible in a short amount of time. If I'd had a parent who might have seen them, I would have worried. Instead, I leaned my head back against the wall to give him better access. His tongue drew a path down the center of my throat as his fingers found their way into my boxers, stroking over my cock in the same rhythm as his tongue flicked over my throat. He bit down hard one last time, leaving what would undoubtedly be two perfect imprints of his bite over my jugular, and then dropped to his knees, looking up at me with his gorgeous mouth twisted in that same slightly insane grin.

"I'll teach you everything I know," he murmured, his mouth inches away as his hands pushed away my boxers, and without notice his mouth was covering my cock, taking me deeper than I'd previously thought was possible outside of the cheap porn my roommates would sneak into school. My hands sank into his hair and held his head as he drew me in deep, moving his throat in a way that made my eyes roll back in my head. I couldn't stop thrusting, not for the world, not for the eight hundred pounds or for all of Simon's fighting skills. My father could walk into the cold, dark alley and tell me that he'd seen the error of his ways and all I would be able to do was moan and keep thrusting into Simon's perfect mouth.

It didn't take much for me to come. Simon hummed as I thrust into his mouth one last time, swallowing around me, and I couldn't keep myself from gasping and pouring everything I had into him. I slumped against the wall, my legs weak, and looked down at him. He wiped his mouth with a smug smile and stood, tucking me back in and buttoning my pants up. His mouth pressed mine briefly, and I barely tasted myself on his tongue before he pulled back again and spoke, his voice teasing but his expression deadly serious.

"Lesson one: never play fair."


End file.
